


A Little More

by Quixcy



Category: Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns
Genre: Spoilers, after the book, good demon boys, silas is my patronus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 18:58:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19179421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quixcy/pseuds/Quixcy
Summary: Elisabeth refuses to let Silas’s sacrifice to be in vain. But when she manages to summon the demon who once was her friend, will he want to return—or take his revenge?





	A Little More

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson! Don’t read if you don’t want the Epilogue spoiled for you.

“ _Silas_ ,” she whispered the demon’s name, a summon to return, a call out into the worlds beyond.

She had called before—she had called him by his other name, by any name, by every name she could find in the great libraries, but he had never returned. 

 _Because he’s dead_ , the little voice inside her head whispered. _Because he became unmade._

Elisabeth didn’t believe that. She couldn’t. Silas couldn’t be dead—the world without Silas felt like a library with no books. She didn’t want to live in that sort of world at all. So she whispered the last name she could think of, the name that couldn’t possibly be his, because it was a name they gave him. He had never said it was a name that he took.

The edges of her words tinged with a puff of frost.

She shivered in the dark room, squinting to see the center of the diagram—but it was so dark she could barely see the tip of her own nose, and all she could smell was the burnt smoke of the extinguished candles.

Nothing.

Again.

Sighing, she leaned back on her knees, and went to stand—

Then—a spark.

It started from the furthest-most candle, igniting her blood as it traced the lines of the confinements, burning the color of a heart-blue flame. It ran around the edge of the pentagram, rushing for each candle, swallowing them in a burst of fire, until the two sides conjoined in front of her. She winced away as the candle flared to life, illuminating the room again, glimmering blue and bright and ominous.

The shadows shifted. Elongated. But as normal shadows stretched toward the edges, shying away from the light, these shadows did the opposite. They reached for the center of the pentagram, meeting in a braid of darkness. And out of it came a figure, tall and pale, the horns rising from his head sharp and brutal. The shadows slithered off his skin again, turning what was once space and air to flesh and blood and bone. His silver hair spilled down his shoulders, hiding most of his gaunt frame.

He turned his yellow eyes down to where she sat in front of the brilliant blue flame. A chill shivered down her spine.

Oh, he was definitely not very happy to see her—or perhaps he disapproved of the state of the room? She hoped that was it. Nathaniel hadn’t kept up the house terribly well.

But there was also a strange line to his lips, neither a frown nor a smile. They were pressed in concentration—or perhaps confusion? It was hard to tell when a demon was confused, she realized, because they looked so ethereal they always seemed to be just… perfect.

But now, just slightly, he was a little bit not.

“Silas?” she began, distrusting her own voice.

“Did it really take so long?” he asked, folding his arms over his chest. He glanced around the room, and made a face. “Has the house fallen into disarray already, Miss Scrivener?”

“You’re . . . here.”

“I am, and I refuse to stay in this room a moment longer, so if you would please excuse me—” And he made a motion to leave again, leave this small room with its blue candles, leave this dusty and unkept house, leave her and Nathaniel and this world again—and her heart squeezed at the thought of it.

“No—stay!” Elisabeth cried, jerking forward as if to try and reach out, to reach into the diagram, to—

She froze, mere millimeters from reaching across the threshold. So close. Too close. If she broke the ring, the magic would be undone, and he would be free to eat and gorge and take his fill of human life. She would be mad to allow that.

He gave her hand a pointed look.

She quickly pulled back. “Silas.”

“You do not need me anymore. Nathaniel doesn’t need me. I am perfectly capable of carrying on without being here.”

“We know but . . .” Elisabeth hesitated, rolling the words around on her tongue, trying to find the right ones—the ones that personified all of the things in her chest she didn’t know how to say. As a child of the library, words should not have failed her, and yet. “But…that doesn’t mean we don’t want you here.”

His delicately-clawed hands fisted. So hard his nails cut into his palms. “I will not take your life. Not after I already sacrificed myself for you to live it.”

“I don’t mind,” she replied.

“The thought would be charming if it did not enrage me so.”

“But…” She dropped her gaze to the glowing confinements that trapped him. If she broke the array, she would unleash him into the world—and what if he was more bloodthirsty than she realized? Or if he blames her for his death to begin with? What if he is tricking her, wanting her to break the array, only so that he wouldn’t have to take a little of her life, but all of it?

He has to be starving, she thought. He must be.

Her fingers trembled as she pressed her thumb against the summoning line. He shifted—just slightly—toward her. In anticipation, or to try to stop her? She dared not guess.

“Miss Scrivener, what are you doing?” he asked, but his voice was detached of any inquiry. He only asked because it was what he knew he was supposed to.

“You’re family. _Our_ family.”

“And if I am hungry?” His words were barely a whisper across his lips.

“Are you?” she asked.

His eyebrows furrowed. He didn’t say anything for a long moment.

And so she slid her thumb across the line, blurring it, disrupting it—breaking it. The candles puffed out with a hiss. The ethereal light faded. She held her breath for one moment, then a moment more. Silas stepped out of the circle, and she felt her entire body tense despite herself. She waited for him to attack her, to—to what? Suck her dry? Steal her lifeforce?

She wasn’t sure.

He took a step closer, and she thought that perhaps she could take one of the candles, use the hot wax to fend him off, to run for the door and—

“There is one thing a great deal more powerful than a life,” he said in that soft and soothing voice she remembered. He reached down his hand, his claws shortening until they were barely longer than manicured nails.

She glanced at his outstretched offer, hesitating. “What’s that?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he replied, and tilted his head slightly. His human form was a little different than she remembered. Perhaps a little taller, his hair a little longer, his cheekbones not as sharp, his skin a little softer. Or perhaps it was just the light. Or the glimmer in his yellow eyes, as if they were telling her a secret she already knew.

Cautiously, she reached up her hand and laid it in his, and his fingers curled gently around it, and he helped her to her feet.

No, he was a little more taller. A little more older. A little more…

A little _more_.

“Come, Miss Scrivener, I suspect Nathaniel has gotten into trouble without us,” he said, and turned on his heels, and left toward the stairs to the first floor, throwing up his arms to raise the shutters. Bright, blinding light pierced the room, and for a moment his shadow flickered—a moment the figure of a demon, horns and bony ligaments and fear—and then the next it was only his shadow, and she drew up her dress and hurried up the stairs after him.


End file.
